Herein, related art is described to facilitate understanding of the invention. Related art labeled “prior art” is admitted prior art; related art not labeled “prior art” is not admitted prior art.
A data center administrator may try to release computing resources for other uses by stopping a workload that was consuming those resources but is not presently needed. Upon stopping a server, the administrator may lose track of the compute, storage, and network requirements of the workload. When it is necessary to bring the application back on line, reactivation may be complicated because the original compute resources may not be available, and the workload's requirements for compute, storage, and networks resources may have been forgotten. Despite the fact that a server can be stopped, resources, e.g. memory, are still committed. Further, restarting a server entails starting back on the original host rather than giving the flexibility to have it started elsewhere for load balancing.